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Comment by TexanFeller | Hacker News Reader

I live in TX and have gas heating my air, water, and food. Gas is CHEAP compared to electricity, my bills are like 1/3 in the winter. A big bonus is that the water heater and stove heat like 3x as fast than electric, saving me time. No more cold showers after my wife uses all the hot water.

And that’s compared to my electricity that’s much cheaper than in most states. My all time high electric bill was ~$220 for a 2500sqft house and that’s when it was 110+ outside for most of the month and I was WFH and keeping the downstairs around 70. I wanted to get solar panels, but couldn’t justify it because I would barely break even before they failed or I needed a new roof.

I do eventually want to switch to electric because I don’t like explosive gasses and their byproducts in my house, but in economic terms electric is a fail.

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Are you sure about not breaking even with Solar panels? Here in Europe modern Chinese panels with 450 Wp can be bought for about 50 € a panel. These panels last 20 years without problems. Even just installing 5 of them will lower your electricity bill by a lot (and can be done by yourself if you have little knowledge of electricity).

It was 5-6 years ago when I looked, so it might be closer now. Panels definitely are getting much cheaper, but even back then most of the cost was labor to install it and semi-skilled labor has gotten much more expensive in the mean time. My average electric bill is probably <$150 because I use gas in the winter, so even saving 100% there’s a long payoff time.

I keep hearing of these magical lifetimes. I've had 2 different brands and multiple panels are taken out of the circuit because they degraded too much.

My neighbour has the same panels but never looks at the output. I told him to check them and he was shocked. How many others are there they simply don't check the output and keep spouting that panels have multi decade lifetimes.

What what your time vs degradation? I see quite a few solar panels in my area showing up on Facebook Marketplace and other online classifieds that seem to be about 10 years old being sold for a "bigger system". But I'm curious if the real story is that straight forward? Are they significantly degraded? Did the controls or inverters fail, and the owner decided it wasn't worth the hastle? I don't know. The headline price seems attractive, but if they're only putting out 10% of name plate, not worth the effort to install.

this was after 5 years

It was so significant that one of the 2 strings, 6 panels each, simply shut off especially during peak hours because the inverter's minimal input voltage wasn't met (during peak voltage usually drops due to negative heat coefficient). 1 simply was broken and was bypassed by the.. bypass diodes i guess. And another was at a third. But again, the lower voltage was a much bigger problem than the input.

problem is, you can only measure this very well under load. So taking your multi meter to the place of sale might not say that much. `It might though for the really broken ones.

I'm in my 13 year and with 10 kWp I'm still generating a maximum of about 8000 W on warm days (which lowers the efficiency). I don't know any neighbours or friends who have had to replace a module.

I wish that were an option here. Used 200W or so panels are asking over $100 ea. It is pretty easy to be over $30k for a new 10 kW grid-tie system.

Wow, that is very expensive. Yeah, we're are having a second solar boom here, I installed a second small 2 kWp system on our garden shed for about 700 €. I'm adding a small 5 kWh battery on top so we can use all this generated energy.

Just one note because I don't think there is wide awareness of this: there are two kinds of electric stoves, and the induction kind is generally faster than gas.

For sure, but as I understand induction stoves are more expensive and you would need to throw out cookware and buy a compatible set that’s also more expensive. It’s really cool, but the poor masses won’t be adopting this kind of cooking setup for a while if it adds cost.

I don't have an induction stove so I'm honestly not sure, but I have seen people say that the cookware thing is overblown because a lot of what people already have will work with induction. But I dunno, you totally might be right about that.

We just got an induction range and our long-time nonstick pan did not work with it. I couldn't figure out why the cooktop was turning off a few seconds after turning on until I switched to a cast-iron pan and saw that the cooktop worked as expected.

It worked great once it got going though. I don't think I'm going to miss gas.

induction stoves are more expensive

Not by a lot. At least here in Sweden the cheapest induction stovetop from a brand I somewhat trust is maybe $150 more than the cheapest ceramic stovetop from a similar brand. Once you move into the midrange, the price difference is virtually gone. As to cookware, unless you use mostly copper cookware, I found that virtually all my pots and pans were compatible.

If you're thinking about induction and want to test your pans, grab a magnet and touch it to the bottom of your pan. If it sticks, the pan will work.

We got a really nice Bosch induction hob for 700€. I installed it myself in less than an hour (the hardest part was cutting the appropriate hole in the worktop).

All of our pots except one was compatible. You will only have problems with very cheap aluminum pans, or with some high end copper cookware. I don't know anyone who has copper cookware, so the problem for most people are their cheap aluminium pans and pots. You should probably replace them anyway. Most stainless steel, all cast iron or forged iron pans are compatible with induction.

Induction is pretty spectacular. It's a bit different than gas, but a good induction hob is both more powerful than gas on the high end, and much better at controlling temperature at the low end.

The only thing I dislike are the touch controls on most units, but I guess you can't have it all.

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